One more Comicon Anecdote

On the Sunday before Comicon, we hosted Harlan Ellison for a book signing at La Luz de Jesus Gallery. I wasn't able to attend because I was extremely ill (and got my relapse immediately after Comicon), so I missed one of the few opportunities I'll ever have again to spend time with Harlan. When I went through the gallery of pictures taken by our publicist, Lee Joseph, I saw a sequence of images featuring Bill Sienkiewicz–compounding my disappointment at not being able to host the event in person.

The following Saturday at Comicon, I found Bill at his table. After catching up a bit and discussing some upcoming gallery business I relayed to him my apologies for not being at the Ellison signing, but told him I had a great couple of pics of him with Harlan. As we were about to part company, Brian Michael Bendis walked over and told Bill that they (and Klaus Jansen and my friend David Mack) had just topped the New York Times Best Seller List with the hard-bound, collected Daredevil: End of Days.

Bill re-introduced me to Bendis and said, "Well I guess you get to share in this victory, too!" which just about made my day.

Below are those two great pics of Bill with Harlan.

My Comic Book Dream Come True!

Sixteen months ago, my friend David Mack (on one of his frequent trips to Los Angeles) almost spent his birthday alone. He was a guest in a house without a host in a week when almost everyone else he knew was out of town. Luckily, his temporary residence was square between the gallery where I work and the apartment I used to rent. So my roommate and I (who both share birthdays within a month of David's) demanded that he let us take him out for a celebratory meal. That evening proved quite pivotal, not only in a friendship that has since included an art exhibition and a future publishing project, but in realizing that regardless of where you are from, as you progress through life you'll find other people from completely different backgrounds who are just like you.

In the course of a conversation that eclipsed the operating hours of a pretty great little gastropub in Silverlake, Mack mentioned that he was working on a script with Brian Michael Bendis for the final Daredevil story–a sort-of The Dark Knight Returns for old horn head. It's no secret that I share the opinion of most comic book academics that Daredevil is perhaps the best written character in superhero fiction. From Frank Miller's two incredible and groundbreaking stints on the title, through many high-calibre stories (including a run by David Mack) to Bendis' who-thought-it-would-be-possible-to-unseat-Frank-Miller-as-the-best-writer-of-Daredevil run, to the holy-shit-I-can't-believe-Ed-Brubaker-improved-upon-the-Bendis run, to the current series which won yet another Eisner Award for Mark Waid & Paolo Rivera, Daredevil has been in some very capable hands.

As a strawberry-blonde teenager named Matt with aspirations to attend law school, and whose dad had been an amateur boxer (long before retiring from a lifetime of government service), I had more than a little in common with blind attorney, Matt Murdoch. I, too, got very into martial arts at a young age, and even did a little pee-wee boxing; I dabbled in non-competitive kick-boxing in my twenties, but I never became a ninja. I got to keep my eyesight, though, so I guess it's a fair trade. Almost as a joke, I told David to feel free to write me in as a shit-bag mob lawyer in whatever story he was writing.

Deadly serious, he looked at me and said, "Are you sure? I'm working on a character right now who doesn't have a name yet."
I was floored. "Hell yeah! That would be awesome!" It was like it was my birthday, not David's.

A few months later I got this text: Just got done proofing your page at Bill Sienkiewicz's place!
I replied: Sin-KEV-itch! Drawing me?
Mack texted back: Bill's inking. Klaus Jansen drew you :)

The man who collaborated with Miller on the original Daredevil run and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was in turn collaborating with the artist on Miller's way-outside-the-box Elektra: Assassin, only this time their roles are reversed, with Klaus penciling and Bill inking. And they were illustrating the words of talented Kabuki scribe and Echo creator David Mack in conjunction with Brian Michael Bendis, whose achievements are too lengthy to list, so I'll just call him the King of Marvel Comics. Somewhere (probably on facebook), there are a few pictures from that night, and hilariously, my silver suit jacket and striped tie have made it onto the page.

I'm not sure if colorist Matt Hollingsworth (Death: The High Cost of Living) is aware, but he nailed it.

In a gracious turn, the lads made me much taller and instead of making me a mob lawyer, I'm the guy that replaces Matt Murdoch as Foggy's business partner.

The law firm of Nelson & Kennedy is referenced no less than three times in the first panel at left. In a bit of unforeseen coincidence, my next door neighbors growing up on Western Ave. in Lynn, MA were The Nelsons. No lawyers there, though.

I wrote about this series last October, when the first issue hit the shops, and I'm happy to say it remains as strong as that initial promise portended. I'd say it's the most engaging masked series out there, probably because of the freedom that tackling a story outside the regular continuity affords. The work is worth the collective talents of the names attached, which is above and beyond any number of manufactured marketing ploys or subpar vanity projects. When the omnibus is finally released it will be great to have all the alternate covers collected in a single volume with the individual issues–especially since both David Mack and Alex Maleev have produced their own versions. Since Michael Lark wasn't a collaborator on either Mack or Bendis' stints at the helm (Lark penciled the Ed Brubaker series apex), I doubt they'll call him in for a cover, but it would be the cherry on top of a pretty sweet series. 

Of course I got my dessert early. Thanks David!

Gentlemen, Reset Your Watchmen!

Half a year has passed since DC Comics launched the first issues of their controversial re-visitation line, BEFORE WATCHMEN. Following on the heels of the successful but somewhat ill-received film, and including the involvement of neither the writer nor penciler of the original series, the move was immediately dismissed as an attempt to crassly cash-in on Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' characters while DC still owned them. The largest share of criticism came from creator Alan Moore, himself, who was adamantly and vocally against the idea.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Moore has never been happy with anyone handling his works other than himself, having famously lambasted the film adaptations of From Hell, and the disappointing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Moore even dismissed the very well-adapted V For Vendetta, and had his name removed from the credits. So, while the fans have been at odds over the years with Moore's opinion concerning the handling of his characters by others, they were very much in the creator's corner when it came to this selling off of the family jewels. The fan backlash against DC Comics was loud and nasty for moving forward with the release of new comics starring Ozymandias, Silk Spectre, Nite Owl, Comedian, Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, and a series dedicated to their forefathers, The Minutemen.

I didn't want to let the internet chatter interfere with my ability to objectively review these new comics, and the talent roster announced for each series ranged from merely interesting to absolutely inspired, so I steered clear of any online news and awaited the weekly supplements to the overall story. This past few weeks has seen the close of the Silk Spectre four-issue, mini-series, but rather than winding down the other titles,  DC announced an expansion with the release of two new series: one dedicated to anecdotal villain, Moloch, and another for Minuteman hero, Dollar Bill. This makes one wonder, can a Captain Carnage one-shot be far behind? Just how far down the vein are they going to drill?

Well if you didn't get a sense of it from that last paragraph, I think the experiment has been a failure. This is where a lot of you get to scream, "I told you so!"
But there have been some successes within that failure, too.

Darwyn Cooke's MINUTEMEN series is still running, and has been excellent every single issue. He's done a great job of padding out the history of the team with adventures that add to the rich legacy of the original series. The same magic he weaved into THE NEW FRONTIER is fully intact in this series, which had advertisements and other interruptions that the original source material did not. Cooke's retro-style perfectly fit the setting of post-war America, and his writing has been crisp and enjoyable.

His work on SILK SPECTRE with artist Amanda Connor was fresh, but got a little goofy in the middle. 1960s psychedelia has never played well in comics (outside of Jim Steranko), and it derailed here as well. It was nice to see such a different take than anything Moore would have been able to script, but it didn't maintain across all four issues. Still, it was above average.

RORSCHACH in the hands of Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo is exactly what fans wanted: gritty, dirty and violent. This was the right team for the task and they're having fun within the historical context of Moore and Gibbons' set-up. It's been a treat thus far, and there's no indication that will change within the remaining issues of the series. The same team that delivered the incredible JOKER graphic novel have proven themselves as dependable a team as Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.

DR. MANHATTAN is a deep sci-fi character, and there are few people you could trust within that genre to not completely ruin the great work the original WATCHMEN series showcased. In J. Michael Straczynski, DC found the perfect man for the task, and paired him with one of the all-time greatest illustrators of naked flesh, Adam Hughes. So far, this has been a wondrous collaboration that ranks among the best for both of them. JMS brings an even deeper understanding of real science with with the big blue guy than he did with his cult hit Babylon 5. This series enriches the concepts developed in the source material and expanded in the film adaptation, making this a great bridge between the two mediums.

That is pretty much where my praise ends.

If Azzarello seemed like a logical choice for Rorschach, why not handle The Comedian, too?
Well, apparently there was only enough moxy for the one series, because THE COMEDIAN is a big disappointment. There are many places one could aim to pinpoint the failure, but I think it's this: choosing to center on what turned Edward Blake from an affable man's man into a sadistic monster is to miss the point entirely. Blake's always been bad. He's an anti-hero, through-and-through. Azzarello is a talented writer and it's because he's so talented that the expectations were high for this. Clearly, The Comedian and Rorschach are the two most popular characters, and the chance to tackle both of them must have been more than Brian could turn down. He chose to tell a single story with Rorschach, and must have felt the need to do more with The Comedian, but that wasn't necessary nor advisable. The guy who rapes a fellow costumed adventurer in the 1940s shouldn't be seen as a good-old boy in the early 1960s paling around with the Kennedys. The writer's take on America's first family is speculative to the point of insult and he changes a piece of Watchmen lore by giving Blake an alibi in the JFK Assassination. He took unnecessary liberties in an attempt to flesh out the bad guy.
I think it would have been wiser to tell Blake's story in an Apocalypse Now series of dossiers outlining his black ops activities. A nice set-up might have been to show someone hired by a Veidt corporation shredding these boxed documents, possibly reading them as they do. If there was a need to take a liberty, the shredder could turn out to be Moloch, who has already been established as an unwilling pawn in Adrian Veidt's game. If there was need for a bigger liberty, it could have been Walter Kovacs.

If Straczynski's specialty is deep sci-fi, how did he wind up on the short list for NITE OWL?
MJS has never done a run on Batman that I ever read, and since Nite Owl is based on Blue Beetle (Charleton's Batman), why didn't DC execs go with a Batman writer? Scott Snyder and Neal Adams would have been a great team for this. Instead, we got a story that seemed too bored with itself to not include the more interesting Rorschach (written terribly, I might add), and really scratchy pencils from the Kubert family. I am a huge fan of Joe Kubert, but I would never have suggested him for this project. He's got the wrong look for inner-city super heroes. Adam and Andy Kubert do superheroes just fine, but I'd be lying if I said they were my dream team for a Watchmen revival. Of course, Snyder already has his hands full writing the terrific BATMAN, SWAMP THING and AMERICAN VAMPIRE series, so he might not have been available. And Neal isn't known for being deadline friendly. But perhaps most importantly, is there enough about Nite Owl that we don't know? Alan Moore (way back in the day) had suggested the possibility of a Nite Owl and Rorschach team-up book in the vein of Randall and Hopkirk: Deceased, but that would have been a comical take on the characters, and it would have been disrespectful for anyone else but Moore to treat these characters anything less than seriously. In this case, Nite Owl was fairly pedestrian. The first issue of MOLOCH THE MAGICIAN was actually quite enjoyable, though, so MJS has a 2-1 record overall.

Jae Lee is an artist's artist. The guy is incredible. In OZYMANDIAS he has produced what many must consider to be the best work of his career. The book is beautiful to see. Unfortunately Len Wein added words to Lee's pictures. Wein helped shape the comics industry in the late 1960s and 70s, and I'm forever grateful for that. I'm a huge fan of his seminal work with Bernie Wrightson on Swamp Thing, and as an editor, Len is a legend. But as a writer? Not so much. His Ozymandias reads so... comic booky that it actually makes me mad. Anyone who read the original Watchmen series would immediately get that Adrian Veidt is a secretive man. He is calculated and charming. He was designed as a forty-something Robert Redford, so he's got the common touch in addition to his immense wealth. He's not a smarmy, two-dimensional confessor. Choosing to fill each page with a description of what is actually on each page as a sort of inner dialogue is not only poor scripting, it's against character. Wein seemingly took the not-too-subtle performance from the film adaptation as the springboard for this series, and wrote it like it might have been written forty-five years ago at Marvel. The way to tell Veidt's story should have been through his auto-biography, which was established as a best seller in the Moore-Gibbons universe. A great writer might use that plot device to show one thing and describe another, so that Veidt's autobiographical descriptions narrate less than heroic visuals creating a sense of the false advertising that we know Ozymandias to be post-Watchmen. Matt Wagner or James Robinson would  have been better choices to pair with Jae Lee, and Brian K. Vaughn could have been stellar, but honestly almost anyone would have been a better choice to write this after reading what's been published thus far. And now Mr. Wein is writing DOLLAR BILL.

I have opted-out at this point. I find myself falling back to collections of serialized newspaper strips like Steve Canyon and Johnny Hazard. I'm drifting away in the lush illustrated tomes of European fumetti and bande dessinee being released by Humanoids and Dark Horse, and even wandering off to discover all the great Japanese manga I missed. The glory of the superhero is cyclical, and with the exception of the current Scott Snyder  and Greg Capullo BATMAN run and the DAREDEVIL END OF DAYS mini series from Brian Michael Bendis, David Mack, Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz, there hasn't been much on par with the series I first highlighted in Pop Sequentialism.


As such, I'll be posting monthly rather than weekly unless something inspires me to interim reporting.

Daredevil's Long Goodbye

Daredevil has been a sort of generational touchstone at Marvel Comics since Frank Miller took over the title in the late 1970s. His initial work on the title–especially when collaborating with inker Klaus Jansen, was (for a time) considered the best comic book run in the long history of the superhero. His revisitation of the character in 1986 was arguably better, and that Born Again story arc became the high water mark against which all other monthly comic plots had to compare.

Many high profile teams of writers and artists followed, including David Mack who brought in pal Brian Michael Bendis to succeed him, and it was the latter's four years at the helm of the title with artist Alex Maleev that matched and outdid the great work Miller had done on the title. Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark had the unenviable task of following the best ever run on the storied franchise of Daredevil and managed to match it for the next three and half years.

Once again, many talented folks followed, but none have lived up to the back to back Bendis and Brubaker years–including the current award-winning series by Mark Waid. That all changed two days ago with the release of Daredevil: End of Days #1. Mack and Bendis began plotting this series back in 2006, and have an artistic dream team in former Miller collaborators Klaus Jansen and Bill Sienkiewicz. Why the long wait? There's just no rushing perfection.

So what happens when one of the least conventional comic creators teams with one of the most popular?

They kill Daredevil.

This isn't really a spoiler, as the hero's corpse is pictured on the cover of the first of eight issues, and his death is revealed a mere five pages into the actual comic (after a gruesome battle with long time nemesis Bullseye). This story takes place in the not-too-distant future and so is outside regular Marvel Universe continuity. In many ways it's the perfectly spaced conclusion to the "Wake Up" story that Mack penciled for Bendis back in 2001. We've all known that the red, horned guardian of Hell's Kitchen wasn't going to die of old age, and he wasn't ever going to retire. It's always been in the cards that Matt Murdoch would die in his Daredevil costume, and via Daily Bugle journalist Ben Urich we get the story. Like Citizen Kane, End of Days opens with a great man's dying words and hopefully in the next 7 issues we'll learn what they meant. Regardless, this is some of the best writing out there, and it's great to see Jansen and Sienkiewicz back in top form. There is a double page spread of the Bugle office immediately following a double page spread of the killing blow, and so textured and detailed is the newsroom that I spent a full five minutes scanning it. This is one of those books that is so sumptuous, that you almost don't want to turn the pages but so compelling is the script that you're helpless against the urge to continue. This is why we buy comics.

I've known David Mack for a little while now. He's a friend and if I asked him he might just tell me what's going to happen in this eight-issue mini-series. Of course that would rob me of the great joy of discovery I am guaranteed from now until next spring. I think I'll wait.